
Intelligent, highly educated, and qualified electrical/computer engineer with extensive engineering experience in all stages of project life cycle and development. Kind, courteous, and enthusiastic professional with a continuous learning attitude.
University Honors
Minor in Mathematics
William J. Santos (M’15) was born in Ceiba, Puerto Rico in 1994. In December 2016, he received the B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Central Florida in Orlando with a minor in mathematics and university honors. In Fall 2019, he began pursuing the M.S in electrical and computer engineering at the University of Arizona in Tucson with financial support from Texas Instruments through the company’s educational assistance program. He expects to graduate with the M.S in December 2022. William became a member of IEEE in 2015.
While studying at the University of Central Florida, he was interested in gaining a breadth of experience in different roles and industries both to learn and to hone in on specific interests. He was blessed with some exciting opportunities. In the summer of 2013, he participated in robotics and image processing research with the center for automation technologies and systems (CATS) led by Dr. John Wen at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, NY as part of the Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) program. His research was focused on low-cost feature detection and defect screening for quality control in manufacturing of automotive fuel injection caps. He then returned to UCF to continue his undergraduate studies. While studying in the fall of 2013 he tutored at the UCF Math Success Center, helping students in mathematics subjects including algebra, geometry, calculus, and ordinary differential equations. His work in industry began in Spring 2014 at Lockheed Martin Missiles and Fire Control as a student contractor. There he supported systems engineering and aerodynamics center of excellence leadership by creating and maintaining manpower databases in addition to developing quantum computing solutions for defense applications with the teams of Skunkworks advanced development programs. Following Lockheed Martin, he joined Duke Energy in 2015 as a summer intern working in engineering and construction planning. His work there included project planning of overhead to underground transition high voltage power systems and cataloging of field equipment for maintenance. Following his summer internship with Duke Energy, in fall 2015 he joined the Center for Microgravity Research led by Dr. Joshua Colwell in the UCF Physics Department. There he gained valuable experience in application of electronic assembly, design, test and measurement to supporting various microgravity experiments while working with a talented and distinguished multi-disciplinary technical team. He also performed machining of mechanical fixture prototypes for the laboratory. Notable experiments included CODA, COLLIDE-3, QPACE, SPACE-2, and Surfsat. He had the opportunity to act as lead electrical engineer for COLLIDE-3, supporting the 2016 launch campaign of COLLIDE-3 by working with a Blue Origin payload control system to successfully integrate the control electronics of the experiment payload with the New Shepard reusable suborbital rocket vehicle on launch day. After graduating with the B.S in December 2016 he began his tenure at Texas Instruments in June 2017, joining the Tucson teams as a participant in the applications engineering rotation program. His first year of work at TI included development of reference designs and technical collateral for temperature and humidity sensors, in addition to microcontroller software for configuration and operation of SAR ADCs. Notable open-source publication of the TI application report titled “TM4C1294 interface to ADS7142 software library” occurred while he worked with the SAR ADC applications team. Since the summer of 2018, he has worked in silicon validation and characterization of temperature and humidity sensors.
In addition to IEEE, Mr. Santos is a member of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM). As an undergraduate Mr. Santos’s awards and honors included the Florida Bright Futures Scholarship, UCF Pegasus Gold Scholarship, Boeing engineering scholarship, and Burnett Honors College membership. His professional interests include electronics, signal processing, control systems, semiconductors, robotics, computing, mathematics, physics and furthering education. He is an avid learner and is passionate about science education and helping others succeed.